late last year aimed to put consulting at the heart of the EY brand. Traditionally, EY is a brand that hasn’t
spent very much on advertising.
But Prybylski says the firm realized
there were areas where EY had great
strengths but the market wasn’t necessarily recognizing them. It was all
about letting the market know that
EY is the navigator of the transformative age, he says.

“I’ve really come to understand
the power of being connected. Our
brand campaign is about consulting;
it’s not about advisory,” he says.
“Consulting is when the multiple
service lines of EY work together
to solve a client’s problem. It’s
not about one service line. We had
a brand deficit; we weren’t being
viewed as a consulting firm. We felt
we were really innovative but maybe people weren’t viewing us that
way,” Prybylski says. “We wanted
to put consulting at the center of the
conversation but really lead with the
conversation around what are the areas of interest to us and what are the
areas of interest to our clients.”

And EY’s linked the campaign
with a new content management
system dubbed the “Transformative
Hub” where EY clients log in to a
portal to get custom content about
their market, industry or even the
status of their project via another
online initiative called EY Synapse.

Case in point: Prybylski says he
was meeting recently with a CEO of
one of the largest financial services
firms and the two were talking about
cyber security. “As you might imagine, cyber is a big deal for them,”
he says. “The consulting industry
prides itself on execution and we’ve
done plenty of cyber work, but the
CEO says ‘we want you to come in
here and push our thinking, give us
bold ideas,’ to think about.”

As a result, Prybylski says EY is
being invited into that brainstorming
session; clients want to have a more
provocative conversation. They want
EY to put new ideas and new solutions on the table. “That’s probably
been one of the biggest mind-shift
changes we’ve seen from clients.”

WHERE DISRUPTION
MEETS INNOVATION

The whole idea is to customize
EY thought leadership to specific
accounts and communicate with clients in a whole new way.

And, Prybylski says EY’s already
gotten a lift from the new branding
campaign. “I think it’s been so effective because we targeted specific
sectors with issue-based marketing
and thought leadership,” he says.
“We’re not just claiming we’re leaders in innovation; we’re showing it.”

They don’t wonder anymore if
they’ll be disrupted, he says, they expect to be disrupted so it’s all about
making sure they’re doing all they
can. “They recognize that maybe
their industry isn’t the most innovative so maybe they even want a solution from another industry; that’s
part of the deal now,” Prybylski says.
“They know that if they don’t move
forward they will be disrupted. It’s
that balance of truly innovative disruptive ideas and a safe pair of hands
to help them with it. That’s where EY
has a unique opportunity. It really is a
fascinating time.”

That’s why EY opened 17 innovation hub centers called “
Wavespaces” around the world with more
on the way. Wavespaces are a global
network of growth and innovation
centers to help clients catch the
next wave in radical breakthroughs
in business transformation by tapping into innovative thinking across
EY disciplines, experience and industry sectors. “This is the future
of brainstorming and the future of
business,” Prybylski says. “It’s completely interactive and the deliverables are built as you go. It’s bringing
together different types of people, a
diversity of thoughts and styles. It’s
what we call ‘suits and jeans integration,’ and it really works.”

Prybylski says he believes clients
want innovation and thought leadership and knows EY does that exceedingly well. “Clients want to see